Prior to establishing Spy I had worked for New
Jersey Senator Bill Bradley on his 1984 re-election campaign before
studying Law at the London School of Economics. I began working in
electronic publishing in the US when I got a summer job working on
a small newsletter in Georgetown, Washington DC. I had gone there to
intern on Capitol Hill.
Other panelists were Lydia Crawford, Centre for Fashion Enterprise; Mark Rogers, CEO of Market Sentinel; Alan Moore, CEO of SMLXL; Tom Savigar, Sense Worldwide; and digital marketing specialist Jason Young
I may post notes on the other panelists’ contributions and the audience discussion. Please contact me if you would like to be notified accordingly. Comments [in brackets] were drafted but not delivered.
Introduction
I will be focusing on information technology but my introduction applies to all technologies
Where do trends fit in?
Where did this trend thing come from?
Why are they important?
Often forgotten by business, regulators, technologists, and designers, who end up designing the wrong thing, or the wrong thing for the future
Ties into the overall question of technology adoption
Trends interact with technology possibilities, infrastructure and supporting technologies, design, regulation, and marketing, shaping the adoption and adaptation of products and services
For instance... [Example of adoption and adaptation of SMS] [image: 11262-sms.jpg]
Trends in technology
Technology doesn’t formally shape society as it has no autonomous dynamic [agency], and in that sense there are no ‘technology trends’
There are trends in what is technologically possible, for instance over the last decade there have been significant (and sometimes continuing) trends in processors power/consumption/size/price, network bandwidth and availability, and hard disk size/capacity/consumption/price.
These have made possible new products... [Example of iPod which builds on colour LCD screens, small high-capacity hard disks, touch-sensitive materials, compact batteries, broadband connections for downloading music, powered connectors such as USB and FireWire, and synchronisation] [images: iPod Photo, photolibrary20041026.jpg, passenger wearing iPod on New York Subway, MTA_PassengerWith_iPod.jpg]
These developments tied into various social trends for people to be:
- less sociable in public
- interact more at a distance (over the Internet, eg: Audioscrobbler, which allows people to get music recommendations based on their listening)
- be more mobile, including commuting to work
- re-mix and share music and be more creative with music
In this way technology can enhance trends (both desirable and undesirable), and can facilitate social change, for instance in the kinds of aural entertainment we create and listen to
Technology trends don’t directly map to what is possible, eg: processing power doubling doesn’t mean ease-of-use doubles
But it is a two-way street. As Churchill noted of architecture, “We shape our buildings and afterwards, our buildings shape us”
Key technology trends
- Wireless for mobile working and mobility
- Broadband networks, and WiMax [definition on Whatis.com] wireless broadband
- On-demand/grid computing/peer-to-peer computing
- Displays: large/flat/hi-res screens, electronic paper and OLEDs [organic LEDs] used to show track information on the new Sony Network Walkman [images: E Ink and Philips high-resolution display, eink_philips_double_eReader.jpg, Sony Network Walkman, Sony NW-E407.jpg]
- Processing power: captured in Moore’s Law, which is consciously pursued by the industry
- Thin client computing (eg: mobile phones), building on better networks [image: Sun Ray thin client computer, Sun Ray.jpg]
- Mobile power: Improving battery life/power, including fuel cells [image: fuel cell bus, Image_209_DCcitaro600.jpg]
- Global positioning: new EU satellite, greater granularity,
- RFID tags and paper barcodes
- Data: structured data/Web services/semantic Web
- Presence and single point-of-presence for communication (including VoIP)
- Software development, including open source and better compression
- Artificial intelligence, which is never referred to as such when it has been successfully applied
Other trends, sometimes ignored
Business
[Current trends include:
- Outsourcing
- Focusing on core competencies
- Risk management
- Shareholder power
- De-unionisation
- Compensation culture/culture of complaint
- Corporate social responsibility]
Business trends have less direct impact, but do impact on levels of innovation.
Society
[Current trends include:
- Distrust (of individuals, organisations and government)
- Culture of victimhood
- Protection (of children)
- Anti-science
- Fear (of crime)/need for security
- Longer working hours
- Demand for choice
- More self-expression, including self-publishing
- Authenticity and individuality
- Wealthier retired/older people
- More solo living
- Focus on the home and domestic activities
- Concern about what we consume
- Concern about the environment]
Social trends can have an important impact on technology trends, sometimes negative, for instance:
- privacy on e-commerce
- protection on Internet use by kids
- anti-science/fear on mobile communications and nano-technology
How do deal with trends
Broadly, product innovation and development needs to tie into trends
Need to consider trends in a broader context or paradigm: don’t go on surface appearances, really understand them, and work from quantitative information
Need to consider product innovation and development in the context of trends at the start of a project
Solutions needs to be designed to anticipate trends at later stages, using processes such as ‘designing forward’. Bill Buxton, former chief scientist at Alias|Wavefront and subsequently SGI, talks about having your “head in the clouds, feet firmly in the dirt”.
Also, you need to read broadly, and look around you
Where to find out more
Technology publications and newsletters
- The Economist Technology Quarterly: in depth analysis of maturing technologies
- New Scientist: breaking news in science and technology
- Wired magazine: forecasting, imagining the future, social impact of technology
- MIT Technology Review: breaking technologies and commentary
- Release 1.0: analysis of technology in business and social contexts
- Business Week: technology applied in contemporary business
- Harvard Business Review online: strategic use of technology
- spiked online: social and political trends, and political analysis of technology in society
- Imperial News mailing list: breaking news from Britain’s MIT
[Images: cover_wired_190.jpg, EconomistTechQuarterly.jpg]
Social trends surveys, reports and resources
- British Social Attitudes
- OECD Future Trends database [partially online]
- World Values Survey
- Sense Worldwide ‘A Composite Sense’ reports
Books and Publications
- ‘Complicated Lives: Sophisticated Consumers, Intricate Lifestyles, Simple Solutions’ Michael Wilmott and William Nelson (John Wiley, 2003)
- ‘Tomorrow People: Mapping the Needs and Desires of Tomorrow’s Customers Now’ Martin Raymond (Financial Times Prentice Hall, 2003)
- Viewpoint magazine, edited by Martin Raymond
Organisations
- Future Foundation: offers nVision resource
- Henley Centre for Forecasting: well-known for its Planning for Consumer Change surveys
- Seymour Powell Foresight: product design-focused research
- Cheskin [US]
